By Bill Elliott, CRCM; director of compliance education, Young & Associates

The White House announced in April 2025 that its goal was to reduce the number of employees in the CFPB by about 88 percent, to 207 positions, but that decision was blocked by the courts. The decision also resulted in a lawsuit brought by the CFPB employee’s union, but since the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” cut the CFPB funding by about half, even if the union prevails, it is unlikely that all employees will return to work.

During the first year of the Trump administration, the CFPB removed approximately 70 pronouncements. Many of those were out of date, archaic, and no longer useful. But some of them were protections that were proposed and finalized during the latter days of the Biden administration. However, they were never actually enforced.

Overdraft fees

One form of relief that consumers lost was a limit on overdraft fees. This has been an ongoing discussion for many years. Between those that believe it was unfair that lower income individuals paid the majority of the overdraft fees vs. others who believe that the culprit is financial mismanagement by consumers. The Biden CFPB finalized the overdraft regulation in 2024 but Congress overturned the regulation last year. This effectively eliminated this discussion for now.

Credit cards

The CFPB also tried to cap the amount of money consumers pay to credit card companies for late charges. The proposed limit for many would have been $10. The regulation was blocked by a federal court last year. The CFPB, under the control of the Trump administration, decided not to fight the matter in court.

Lawsuits

The CFPB also withdrew several lawsuits.

We will mention two examples.

1. The CFPB sued Capital One in January 2025 for $2 billion. They alleged that Capital One has misrepresented the interest rate paid on its savings accounts to customers. That lawsuit was dismissed.
2. The CFPB also sued Early Warning Systems, the company that runs the money transfer service Zelle, in December 2024 for $870 million alleging that the EWS and the banks that operate Zelle were negligent in protecting consumers from fraud and scams. That lawsuit was also dismissed last year.

Complaints

There has also been a slowdown in the number of complaints resolved by the CFPB. The CFPB runs its own consumer complaint database, where a consumer can allege wrongdoing by their bank or financial services company and the CFPB will act as intermediary between the consumer and financial company to resolve the complaint. Under the Biden CFPB, roughly half of all consumer complaints were resolved with relief for the consumer, while under the Trump CFPB, that figure has dwindled to less than 5 percent, largely due to the staffing issues discussed above.

Compliance examinations

Following the CFPB lead, the prudential regulators (OCC, Federal Reserve, and FDIC) have all indicated (with some differences) that they are going to be changing the methods for compliance examinations. Future examinations will likely be more risk focused.

Since the regulators are going to be more targeted in their approach, they are essentially relying on banks to police other areas of compliance themselves. The examiner will likely spend more time reviewing your compliance program, and especially your compliance audit program, to assure it is functioning appropriately.

Banks must adjust accordingly, and compliance audit will (at least for some banks) need to be improved. Whether your compliance auditor/reviewer is internal or external, you need to assure that you do not get so relaxed that when the regulators do appear, you pay the price of not being properly prepared.

Time between examinations

The time in between examinations is also likely to increase. For the regulators, this will allow them to review banks using fewer examiners.

While that appears to be a “win” for banks, banks need to be careful. For instance, should you receive a “needs to improve” or “substantial noncompliance” CRA rating, you may have to live with the negative consequences of that rating for longer periods of time.

Conclusion

As you’re reviewing your compliance program, assure that all necessary pieces are in place, including compliance review/audit. It is unlikely that there will be many new regulations in the next few years. This should allow bank to ensure that they are in full compliance with the regulations that exist.